“Have you seen my poor sister?”
“I was called last night while at Mrs. Hicks’s cottage, and went almost at once. It’s very terrible—very. She’ll get brain fever if we’re not careful. Such a shock! She was walking alone, down in the croft by the river—all in a tremendously heavy dew too. She was dry-eyed and raved, poor girl. I may say she was insane at that sad moment. ‘Weep for yourself!’ she said to me. ‘Let this place weep for itself, for there’s a great man has died. He was here and lived here and nobody knew—nobody but his mother and I knew what he was. He had to beg his bread almost, and God let him; but the sin of it is on those around him—you and the rest.’ So she spoke, poor child. These are not exactly her words, but something like them. I got her indoors to her mother and sent her a draught. I’ve just come from confining Mrs. Woods, and I’ll walk down and see your sister now before I go home if you like. I hope she may be sleeping.”
Will readily agreed to this suggestion; and together the two men proceeded to the valley.
But many things had happened since the night. When Doctor Parsons left Mrs. Blanchard, she had prevailed upon Chris to go to bed, and then herself departed to the village and sat with Mrs. Hicks for an hour. Returning, she found her daughter apparently asleep, and, rather than wake her, left the doctor’s draught unopened; yet Chris had only simulated slumber, and as soon as her mother retreated to her own bed, she rose, dressed, crept from the house, and hastened through the night to where her lover lay.
The first awful stroke had fallen, but the elasticity of the human mind which at first throws off and off such terrible shocks, and only after the length of many hours finally accepts them as fact, saved Chris Blanchard from going mad. Happily she could not thus soon realise the truth. It recurred, like the blows of a sledge, upon her brain, but between these cruel reminders of the catastrophe, the knowledge of Clement’s death escaped her memory entirely, and more than once, while roaming the dew alone, she asked herself suddenly what she was doing and why she was there. Then the mournful answer knelled to her heart, and the recurrent spasms of that first agony slowly, surely settled into one dead pain, as the truth was seared into her knowledge. A frenzied burst of anger succeeded, and under its influence she spoke to Doctor Parsons, who approached her beside the river and with tact and patience at length prevailed upon her to enter her home. She cursed the land that had borne him, the hamlet wherein he had dwelt; and her mother, not amazed at her fierce grief, found each convulsive ebullition of sorrow natural to the dark hour, and soothed her as best she could. Then the elder woman departed a while, not knowing the truth and feeling such a course embraced the deeper wisdom.
Left alone, her future rose before Chris, as she sat upon her bed and saw the time to come glimmer out of the night in colours more ashy than the moonbeams on the cotton blind. Yet, as she looked her face burned, and one flame, vivid enough, flickered through all the future; the light on her own cheeks. Her position as it faced her from various points of view acted upon her physical being—suffocated her and brought a scream to her lips. There was nobody to hear it, nobody to see the girl tear her hair, rise from her couch, fall quivering, face downward, on the little strip of carpet beside her bed. Who could know even a little of what this meant to her? Women had often lost the men they loved, but never, never like this. So she assured herself. Past sorrows and fears dwindled to mere shadows now; for the awful future—the crushing months to come, rose grim and horrible on the horizon of Time, laden with greater terrors than she could face and live.
Alone, Chris told herself she might have withstood the oncoming tribulation—struggled through the storms of suffering and kept her broken heart company as other women had done before and must again; but she would not be alone. A little hand was stretching out of the loneliness she yearned for; a little voice was crying out of the solitude she craved. The shadows that might have sheltered her were full of hard eyes; the secret places would only echo a world’s cruel laughter now—that world which had let her loved one die uncared for, that world so pitiless to such as she. Her thoughts were alternately defiant and fearful; then, before the picture of her mother and Will, her emotions dwindled from the tragic and became of a sort that weeping could relieve. Tears, now mercifully released from their fountains, softened her bruised soul for a time and moderated the physical strain of her agony. She lay long, half-naked, sobbing her heart out. Then came the mad desire to be back with Clement at any cost, and profound pity for him overwhelmed her mind to the exclusion of further sorrow for herself. She forgot herself wholly in grief that he was gone. She would never hear him speak or laugh again; never again kiss the trouble from his eyes; never feel the warm breath of him, the hand-grip of him. He was dead; and she saw him lying straight and cold in a padded coffin, with his hands crossed and cerecloth stiffly tying up his jaws. He would sink into the silence that dwelt under the roots of the green grass; while she must go on and fight the world, and in fighting it, bring down upon his grave bitter words and sharp censures from the lips of those who did not understand.
Before which reflection Death came closer and looked kind; and the thought of his hand was cool and comforting, as the hand of a grey moor mist sweeping over the heath after fiery days of cloudless sun. Death stood very near and beckoned at the dark portals of her thought. Behind him there shone a great light, and in the light stood Clem; but the Shadow filled all the foreground. To go to her loved one, to die quickly and take their mutual secret with her, seemed a right and a precious thought just then; to go, to die, while yet he lay above the earth, was a determination that had even a little power to solace her agony. She thought of meeting him standing alone, strange, friendless on the other side of the grave; she told herself that actual duty, if not the vast love she bore him, pointed along the unknown road he had so recently followed. It was but justice to him. Then she could laugh at Time and Fate and the juggling unseen Controller who had played with him and her, had wrecked their little lives, forced their little passions under a sham security, then snapped the thread on which she hung for everything, killed the better part of herself, and left her all alone without a hand to shield or a heart to pity. In the darkness, as the moon stole away and her chamber window blackened, she sounded all sorrow’s wide and solemn diapason; and the living sank into shadows before her mind’s accentuated and vivid picture of the dead. Future life loomed along one desolate pathway that led to pain and shame and griefs as yet untasted. The rocks beside the way hid shadowy shapes of the unfriendly; for no mother’s kindly hand would support her, no brother’s stout arm would be lifted for her when they knew. No pure, noble, fellow-creature might be asked for aid, not one might be expected to succour and cherish in the great strait sweeping towards her. Some indeed there were to look to for the moment, but their voices and their eyes would harden presently, when they knew.
She told herself they must never know; and the solution to the problem of how to keep her secret appeared upon the threshold of the unknown road her lover had already travelled. Now, at the echo of the lowest notes, while she lay with uneven pulses and shaking limbs, it seemed that she was faced with the parting of the ways and must make instant choice. Time would not wait for her and cared nothing whether she chose life or death for her road. She struggled with red thoughts, and fever burnt her lips and stabbed her forehead. Clement was gone. In this supreme hour no fellow-creature could fortify her courage or direct her tottering judgment. Once she thought of prayer and turned from it shuddering with a passionate determination to pray no more. Then the vision of Death shadowed her and she felt his brief sting would be nothing beside the endless torment of living. Dangerous thoughts developed quickly in her and grew to giants. Something clamoured to her and cried that delay, even of hours, was impossible and must be fatal to secrecy. A feverish yearning to get it over, and that quickly, mastered her, and she began huddling on some clothes.
Then it was that the sudden sound of the cottage door being shut and bolted reached her ear. Mrs. Blanchard had returned and knowing that she would approach in a moment, Chris flung herself on the bed and pretended to be sleeping soundly. It was not until her mother withdrew and herself slumbered half an hour later that the distracted woman arose, dressed herself, and silently left the house as we have said.